Nurturing The Artists We Are

“If we become addicted to the external, our interiority will haunt us. We will become hungry with a hunger no image, person or deed can still. To be wholesome, we must remain truthful to our vulnerable complexity. In order to keep our balance, we need to hold the interior and exterior, visible and invisible, known and unknown, temporal and eternal, ancient and new, together. No one else can undertake this task for you. You are the one and only threshold of an inner world. This wholesomeness is holiness. To be holy is to be natural, to befriend the worlds that come to balance in you. Behind the facade of image and distraction, each person is a artist in this primal and inescapable sense. Each one of us is doomed and privileged to be an inner artist who carries and shapes a unique world.”

John O’Donohue, in Anam Cara

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Oh my…

These words…

The thoughts and images they invoke for me…

Are beyond incredible.

As I read them, I long to stay immersed in them

Until I absorb all that they are saying

About each one of us…

Our beauty

Our power

Our potential

Our purpose…

Take just a few moments to wade into just a single one of these phrases…

Whichever one tugs at your mind

Your heart

Your soul.

Listen.

You WILL be changed…

So get ready.

Where are they pleading for you to walk with them?

Where in your world do they ask you to take them?

Now…reach for the soft hand they offer you…

And find a way to walk…

Looking around intently

To see where they may want to rest next.

A kind word.

A smile.

Throwing away some trash left behind by another.

Forgiving some word or deed from your past…

Speak, if you feel called.

Yet do so with gentleness for all concerned.

Act…if you dare…

For some courage

Some vulnerability will be required of you.

Look around.

And you will suddenly find yourself emerging slowly but surely from your previous protective cocoon.

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2 thoughts on “Nurturing The Artists We Are”

“We must remain truthful to our vulnerable complexity.” With my writing, my memory books, my photography, even my relationships, I am finding this season to be about just that: digging deeply into my creativity and allowing it to surface without judgement. It is an everyday challenge, but the rewards are plentiful when I know I have tapped into my god-given talents and set them free. Thanks for getting me to think about how important the process is and why I take this inner journey.

It IS truly a challenge balanced by rewards, this inner journey we take up.

We are searching for all that has been “covered” in our lives, so that we find ourselves constantly…

UNcovering
Then
DIScovering
Then
REcovering
What was always ours from the beginning.
I love how you appreciate the presence of this process in your creativity: such a very important part of becoming whole again, especially keeping “non-judgement” in the forefront. I too am finding new depths to my piano playing that I never knew or believed were possible…and my soul is completely filled with gratitude for this new experience, as receiving a cool satisfying drink of water for a deep lifetime of thirst.